The Smashing Pumpkins – Astral Planes

It says a lot about how much the Smashing Pumpkins stock has fallen that they can release a free album (44 tracks in all, to be set free one at a time from the bands website) and yet fail to register a decent presence on the blogosphere. Guess that’s what happens when fashion deserts you or more pertinently your bandmates. So 6 tracks in and the hype machine seems decidedly unimpressed with Billy’s two fingers to the music industry. To be fair the quality is decent with ‘Astral Planes’ being the pick of bunch as it closely matches the ferocity of yore and sees fits to include a pretty nifty chorus (that sadly only materialises once during the 4 minutes). There is certainly enough to warrant a degree of anticipation for the upcoming 38 tracks, heck, this could be the most unexpected second coming so far this decade. KD